<?php
/**
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 * Copyright © 2017 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
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**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'My lanyards arrived!',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/04/10.jpg" alt="A lanyard on a wooden railing" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		Yesterday, I went to my <a href="https://bandcamp.com/y_st">Bandcamp collection</a> to see what album I needed to review next was, and found that several of my past reviews had disappeared.
		I panicked a little, but when I logged in to try to put them back, I found they were all in place.
		At the time, I thought there was a syncing issue.
		The reviews were visible when logged in, but the version of the page when logged out didn&apos;t have them yet for some reason.
		Today, I found the actual problem though.
		Reviews left for subscriber-exclusive albums can&apos;t be read by non-subscribers or those that are logged out.
		What&apos;s the point of that!?
		I mean, seriously.
		Isn&apos;t the point of the reviews to try to get other people to buy those albums?
		In the case of subscriber-only albums, that translates to convincing people that an album or albums is worth the subscription.
		However, if only those that already have the subscription are able to read the review, it means that only those that <strong>*already have*</strong> the album are able to read it.
		No one can be convinced to buy or not by the subscription at that point.
		So what&apos;s the point?
	</p>
	<p>
		As I suspected might happen, it was my father that delivered the lanyards.
		They asked if I was living here now, and also asked if I had a roommate.
		They didn&apos;t know I&apos;m Alex Yst until today.
		I&apos;ll have my name legally changed soon enough, but that&apos;ll be a later time.
		It turns out my father only delivers on this route on Mondays; had the lanyards arrived any other day, my location would remain unknown.
	</p>
	<p>
		While at my place, my father offered my an interest-free loan to pay off my student debt.
		I can&apos;t really see why not to take them up on the offer.
		They promised not to tell my mother, who&apos;d freak out if they ever found out, and if my father pulls something, there&apos;s no actual contract.
		They&apos;re the one out money, not me.
		... on second thought, I shouldn&apos;t give into the temptation to take this offer.
		My father&apos;s proven to be untrustworthy.
		The most vivid example of this in my mind comes from when I was a child.
		My mother used to freak out when I&apos;d tell them how I felt (emotionally).
		Not only that, but when freaking out, they&apos;d claim I didn&apos;t feel the way I felt.
		They wouldn&apos;t trust me about my own feelings and couldn&apos;t even remain calm, so I refused to tell them how I felt any more.
		(Years later, my mother claimed to have meant that I <strong>*shouldn&apos;t*</strong> have felt the way I described, but that&apos;s not what they said.
		Furthermore, as my mother has a tendency to completely rewrite history, I highly doubt this claim&apos;s validity.
		That doesn&apos;t even touch on the fact that there&apos;s no reason to say I <strong>*don&apos;t*</strong> feel a certain way when they really mean I <strong>*shouldn&apos;t*</strong> feel that way.)
		I also refused to tell my father, as my father would relay this to my mother.
		One time, my father promised not to blab, and claimed to genuinely take an interest.
		I told them, and they immediately told my mother as soon as I was out of sight.
		My mother then came and freaked out at me about it.
		They claimed to have done it because they didn&apos;t believe my assessment of the situation.
		They thought my mother was much more reasonable then my mother actually is.
		However, that doesn&apos;t change the facts.
		Even if my mother had reacted well, my father permanently lost my trust that day.
		Regardless of if my assessment was correct or incorrect, we had an agreement and they broke it within minutes.
		I wouldn&apos;t have spilled my guts then had I known what they planned to do, and I can&apos;t trust now that my father can keep their word either.
		I think this event is one of the major reasons I&apos;m so paranoid and so cautious.
		I can&apos;t trust even my own parents, so who <strong>*can*</strong> I trust.
		No one.
		I&apos;m not convinced my father is a different person than they were back then, and if they can&apos;t trust my assessment of my own situation and especially my decisions regarding who gets what information about my life, I can&apos;t put my life in their hands.
		It&apos;s too big a gamble.
		By taking this loan, I create dangerous information and give them access to it.
	</p>
	<p>
		The lanyards were not as expected. They&apos;re made from a somewhat softer material, and I worry they might not be as durable as hoped.
		However, my main concern was that they wouldn&apos;t have the text woven into them, but rather printed on them.
		The example image showed a lanyard with the text and logo woven in, but I haven&apos;t dealt with this company before, the woven colour was listed as the &quot;print colour&quot; (due to some of their options involving print instead of woven designs), and the company&apos;d already messed up when I first ordered.
		I was ready to confront them about their product not being as advertised.
		These lanyards are just fine though, the text is woven in, and there&apos;s no way for it to just rub off on me.
		The thirty I ordered (the minimum order) were all wrapped in a single plastic wrapping, but another was outside that wrapping.
		They sent me an extra one!
		I&apos;m not sure why they did that, but I&apos;ll keep it with the rest of the unused ones until I know what to do with them.
		I plan to use at least three, one with each of three sets of keys.
		I have a tendency to misplace my keys, so having a backup set and a backup backup set has always been helpful to me.
	</p>
	<p>
		I went out to pay the power bill today and get some information.
		My bill says the utility company charges a fee for paying by credit card online, but do they charge a fee for paying by credit card in person?
		It turns out they don&apos;t even <strong>*accept*</strong> credit cards in person.
		Cash it is then.
	</p>
	<p>
		I also had my keys duplicated while I was out.
		The locksmith wouldn&apos;t take my credit card either unless I presented $a[ID] to go with it.
		They said the card was too new.
		Maybe they trust well-worn cards more then?
		Maybe new cards look like they&apos;ve been obtained in some sort of identity theft scam?
		In any case, cash was my friend again.
		I can&apos;t wait until the name on my $a[ID] matches the name on my credit card, but I&apos;m not ready to go through with the legal name change just yet.
	</p>
	<p>
		The parent of the on-site manager saw my father deliver the goods, so later in the day, they caught me to talk to me about future deliveries.
		Apparently, if I&apos;m not going to be home, I can leave instructions on my door to have packages delivered to the on-site property manager&apos;s apartment.
		If signatures are needed, I won&apos;t miss my package, and I can pick it up at their place.
		Nice!
		Had I known before, I could&apos;ve concealed my location, even though I was home at the time.
		For that matter, I wouldn&apos;t <strong>*have*</strong> to be home.
		I waited around all day to be sure to be here to sign for it, but I actually wanted to run to the bank and credit union.
		Had I been free to leave, I&apos;d&apos;ve had my credit card bill paid off today.
	</p>
	<p>
		While they had my attention, they also told me about the washing machine they&apos;d just cleaned.
		Apparently, the parent of the on-site manager usually gets stuck with the task of scraping the hardened soap out of the soap-input hole of the washing machines.
		For this reason, they don&apos;t like when tenants use powdered soap, as it sticks in there badly while the liquid soap rinses clean without leaving gunk.
		However, neither the property manager or the on-site manager get the money from the coin-operated washing machines.
		Instead, some third-party company gets that.
		That&apos;s kind of a rip-off.
		That said, I don&apos;t think the soap build-up actually hurts anything, it&apos;s just a cosmetic problem.
		In any case, after scrapping the soap out, they needed to run the machine to rinse the last flakes of it from the inner area that the soap-input hole leads too.
		They had to use their own money to do this, but had no laundry to do.
		They kindly offered to let me put my own laundry in the machine, but I did laundry yesterday.
		I only have one work uniform to wash.
		The cost of drying one work uniform would outweigh the benefit of getting that one outfit washed gratis.
		A kind offer for sure, but my timing didn&apos;t allow it to work out.
	</p>
	<p>
		I headed to the bank before work to see about my options for paying my credit card in person.
		The most important question, of course, was whether I could pay my bill in person at all.
		Noting in any of the documents the bank gave me give any indication that this is possible.
		Instead, remote payments such as payments online and payments by post are offered.
		Indeed though, the bank will take credit card payments in person.
		Next, what forms of payment do they accept?
		Several, it seems, including cash.
		Again, the material the bank gave me made it pretty clear they <strong>*don&apos;t*</strong> take cash.
		However, in person, they&apos;ll take cash as long as the person paying the bill is the account holder.
		If for some reason I need to have someone else bring my payment to the bank, I can&apos;t have them bring cash.
		I briefly considered bringing the bank a barrage of one-dollar bills.
		When I pay in cash, I always use one-dollar bills.
		However, that seems a bit mean, given the size of my bill.
		In exchange for giving me what I need, a credit card with my real name instead of my birth name without the need to have had my name changed in court yet, I&apos;ll pay in large bills.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, I headed to the credit union to deposit my paycheque and withdraw a fifty and some hundreds to pay my credit card bill.
		The credit union doesn&apos;t offer hundreds though, but they do have fifties.
		Good enough.
		The bank won&apos;t complain about that.
		There wasn&apos;t time to head back to the bank before work, so I&apos;ll probably pay my bill tomorrow.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve been trying a new trick lately to help with lucid dreaming.
		Basically, throughout the day, you ask yourself if you&apos;re dreaming.
		Get in the habit, and you&apos;ll start asking yourself that when you actually <strong>*are*</strong> dreaming.
		It gives you the opportunity to notice that you&apos;re not in the real world.
		I haven&apos;t been remembering to ask myself as often as I should, and go for days on end without considering the question.
		Tonight though, I asked myself, and it occurred to me that if living in this apartment was all just a dream, it&apos;d be very sad.
		I enjoy living here, and I enjoy living alone.
		I don&apos;t want to give that up.
		That said, I&apos;m most certainly <strong>*not*</strong> dreaming, so everything&apos;s fine and good.
	</p>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		It just occurred to me today that I didn&apos;t have my program advisor changed on me this term.
		Somewhere in my journal, I mentioned wondering if having a different advisor every term was just the way things were done at University of <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span>, as in my first three terms, I had a different advisor every time a new term began.
		It seems that&apos;s not the case.
		I&apos;m not sure why I changed advisors twice, but the changing has been put to a halt at least for now.
		Yay stability!
	</p>
</section>
<section id="docmod">
	<h2>Document modifications</h2>
	<p>
		On <a href="/en/weblog/2017/11-November/02.xhtml">2017-11-02</a>, this journal page was modified in order to redact the name of the university.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
